Steve Donoghue on the David Foster Wallace Reader: “There isn’t a page of this enormous book, not a single paragraph, that sounds human. All of it so incredibly, so glaringly ‘written’ that it all seems like a parody of the very thing Wallace was implicitly cautioning his students against.”

7 Responses to Linkage

Both David Foster Wallace passages that Steve Donoghue uses in his post to illustrate DFW’s logorrhea really work for me, especially the second one, which is heavily influenced by Faulkner. Both writers trafficked more in tones than plot, which is right up my alley. Some people enjoy well-written rumination, some people don’t. I’ve always said that “literary fiction” is a genre just like crime fiction is a genre. It’s a style, usually, unless a writer happens to transcend that style into something more substantial, something that palpably enriches the lives of readers. I’ve gotten that experience quite often from “literary fiction.” I’ve gotten it 3 or 4 times from other genres. Which is totally fine, I’m just sayin’.

I’m hoping the expulsion of the U. of Oklahoma students is something of a tipping point with regards to how limited our speech is becoming. From the banning of keynote speakers to this, it’s becoming clear that the university setting is no longer one where ideas can be freely expressed and compete with each other. Where students get exposed to and learn to engage with potentially troubling (but not illegal) behavior. It’s ridiculous.

The brilliant critic Paul Fussell wrote a whole book (“Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing”) making the point that literary fiction is a genre like any other. It’s also my favorite genre. But I can’t get behind DFW like JV. I also disagree with the linked-to post that DFW could have been saved by some good editing. What grates about his writing is that he was basically a crazy man; he was mentally ill; he was sad and insane, and I knew from the first couple pages I read by him that wherever he was going, I didn’t want to go there.

A new Alien movie is bad enough, but having it ignore and try to undo the horrible sequels after Aliens is turning the project into a nerd restorationist religion. And like most self-styled restoration movements, it’s adding a big new chunk of its own to the original canon, rather than just letting it be. It’s the sci-fi version of The Book of Mormon.

Youth activism sure has come a long way since the ’60s. Back then, it was students protesting actions by the government. And they tried to enlist as many of their peers in the movement as they could.

Now it’s one subculture of students protesting against another group of their peers. And it’s over speech rather than actions. And they’re eager to receive the help of the government, the school administration, and other authority figures, in their so-called struggle.

It goes to show how infantilized the Millennials are. These gay college slapfights are sibling rivalries, with the whinier sibling squealing as loud as possible to the parents to intervene and make the mean sibling stop saying mean things because their very self-esteem is at stake.

If we run into Marty McFly this year, we must go back to 1985 and abort the Millennial generation.

I’m not much of an audiophile (in the sense I don’t know all the terminology, or what exactly “an equalizer” is really used for), but I’ve long been under the impression that the old, Carter administration era stereo equipment I grew up listening to, was superior to the stuff they’ve been putting out in recent years. It just plain sounded better (and was louder).